I dragged myself away from the ballet barre and climbed back on the history horse today. I was surprised to read this about the early Sumerian civilization of southern Mesopotamia:
In the midst of the uncertainties of Mesopotamian life, some feeling that a possible access to protection existed was essential. Men depended on the gods for reassurance in a capricious universe. The gods—though no Mesopotamian could have put it in these terms—were conceptualizations of elementary attempts to control environment, to resist the sudden disasters of flood and dust-storm, to assure the continuation of the cycle of the seasons by the repetition of the great spring festival when the gods were again married and the drama of creation was re-enacted. After that, the world's existence was assured for another year.
—J.M. Roberts, The New History of the World
Didn't these people know that they were, by far, the most wealthy and advanced civilization in their region (and on the planet, though they couldn't have known that)? Didn't they know they lived on extremely fertile land that was also blessed with an abundance of domesticable plant and animal species? Did they not see their population growing and the extent of their occupation of the Tigris and Euphrates floodplains expanding?
The early Sumerians had every advantage over their more primitive neighbours, and yet they seem to have had a great anxiety about their survival. Every regional center had its own god with its temple, and these became the seeds of the first monumental structures and the first cities. Writing seems to have developed out of a need to record the size of crops brought to the temples. Life revolved around the gods who could bring either abundance or destruction.
I wonder if this was a cultural holdover from neolithic times when survival was much more difficult and people had little control over their food sources and little organized protection against enemies—like people who are born poor and continue to pinch pennies even after acquiring wealth. Was it perhaps because they knew they were "cheating" nature with their agriculture and irrigation and were worried that the gods would be angry at this violation of the natural order? Were they insecure about their new abilities to produce food and govern large populations and so needed support from higher powers?
Or is it just human nature to always want more? We in the "First World" are, as the name suggests, in the same position as Sumer was 5000 years ago, yet our litany of complaints about the supposed rigors of our lives is endless. I haven't read Gilgamesh yet but I understand it is about a great king who wanted immortality. It wasn't enough that he was one of, if not the wealthiest person that ever lived; he wanted it forever. Of course he was denied, but that doesn't seem to have stopped his culture or the ones that followed it from desiring ever more wealth and security. Five thousand years have passed and we still don't seem to know when enough is enough.
